Now each of us handles perceived offences differently, and some people feel more resentment than others when they think they've been badly treated.
Resentment, when left unchecked, nibbles away at our spirit and mental well-being. It diminishes our ability to love and trust others. And it's very easy to feel resentful. People can arouse that emotion in us any time they fail to care, fail to think, or even when they fail to meet our expectations of what we deem to be good, fair, moral, or decent.
Let's say a colleague presents your idea as his own at a meeting. You work harder but the other person gets the promotion. A colleague says something mean about you in front of others. Or we feel we've been humiliated in a mass email. Most of us have gotten into protracted email squabbles which in the end turned out to be rather silly and meaningless.
We feel resentful because we imagine that our reputation has been violated, and that others' opinion of us has been ruined. The truth is, people don't care. People forget. People are too busy worrying about themselves to think about you. The world goes on heedless, and in a minute, an hour, or a day, it's not going to matter. On the day we die, these little trespasses are going to mean nothing at all. Why let them mean something today?
Rejecting resentment though, doesn't mean being passive, submissive or timid. If you genuinely feel you have been wronged and there is something constructive you can do to rectify it, then by all means, go ahead. Most of the time though, the things that make us resentful are truly insignificant. They don't deserve our time, our energy or our thoughts.
Why give someone the power to rob us of our peace of mind?
As Irish-American actor and writer Malachy McCourt once said, "Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die."
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